Modelling and Control of Subsonic Missile for Air-to-Air Interception

TL;DR

This paper develops a control system for subsonic air-to-air missiles, using a combined PID, lead compensator, and Kalman filter to improve interception accuracy and noise rejection, validated through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel autopilot control design with an optimized PID, lead compensator, and Kalman filter tailored for subsonic missile interception, addressing actuator delay and high-frequency noise.

Findings

21% reduction in rise time

10% reduction in settle time

Achieved system performance despite actuator delay

Abstract

Subsonic missiles play an important role in modern air-to-air combat scenarios - utilized by the F-35 Lightning II - but require complex Guidance, Navigation and Control systems to manoeuvre with 30G's of acceleration to intercept successfully. Challenges with mathematically modelling and controlling such a dynamic system must be addressed, high frequency noise rejected, and actuator delay compensated for. This paper aims to investigate the control systems necessary for interception. It also proposes a subsonic design utilizing literature and prior research, suggests aerodynamic derivatives, and analyses a designed 2D reduced pitch autopilot control system response against performances. The pitch autopilot model contains an optimized PID controller, 2nd order actuator, lead compensator and Kalman Filter, that rejects time varying disturbances and high frequency noise expected during flight. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method through reduction in rise time (21%), settle time (10%), and highlighted its high frequency deficiency with respect to the compensator integration. The actuator delay of 100ms has been negated by the augmented compensator autopilot controller so that it exceeds system performance requirements (1) & (3). However, (2) is not satisfied as 370% overshoot exists. This research confirms the importance of a lead compensator in missile GNC systems and furthers control design application through a specific configuration. Future research should build upon methods and models presented to construct and test an interception scenario.